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9/19/08

The weight of her

I had to take the challenge of writing about my favorite part of Zoe's early days. It is, after all, a baby shower for one of my favorite bloggers.

Plus there are some great prizes up for grabs. Mostly, it's a good opportunity for me to reminisce about a time, Zoe's first few weeks, that I want to remember, and remember fondly, as I get more and more used to the idea of going through it all again next spring. (Lord help me.)

----------------------In the weeks right after Zoe's birth, it got very warm here in Pasadena. I was reluctant to turn on the AC, preferring to sit and sweat, with the warm, moist weight of tiny Zoe against my chest. I studied the swirls of hair on her face that seemed to join her eyebrows to her hairline and wondered about her future need for forehead waxing. I listened to her snurffly breath, uneven and raspy and wondered when she would suffer her first cold. I cradled her against me in a sling and tried to wrap my brain around the thought that these floppy, spazzy limbs would some day run and grab and throw and write and hug.

I tried so hard not to wish for what she would be. To just sit with who she was, at that very moment.I held her so close so often then. There seemed no other choice. She was another appendage. In the late night hours, I walked with her snug in a sling, singing nonsense 80's Bananarama to lull her to sleep, singing "It's a cruel, CRUEL cruel sum-mer" to keep me from falling asleep on my feet. In the dark early, early morning hours, I bounced on a ball with her in my arms, every rhythmic bounce bringing us both closer to dreamland.

These days she is so separate, even when it seems she's all over me, it's a crazed, flailing, gone-in-60-seconds moment. And those days of holding her endlessly, though it seemed it would last forEVER, are long, long gone.

If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still remember the weight of her.... right... HERE.

yours truly

CBHM is raising Z (born April 2006) and E (born May 2009) in small-town Virginia with Chic Geek and Sweet Dog as companions in the journey. You can email her at cluelessbuthopeful (at) gmail (dot) com.

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"Once we were such girls, remember?, the mothers all said as they picked at their kids organic chicken nuggets and poured themselves pinots, their children coloring beneath their feet like good dogs, or sucking organic yogurt out of little plastic strips, or playing make-believe in their mother's dresses and lipsticks and high-heeled shoes, or napping, or watching Bob the Builder DVDs, or screaming their fucking heads off." - Jennifer Gilmore, The Mothers